“Good morning, Marines!” Faith said, standing on the body of a good infected and looking up at the Marines on the guardhouse of Fort Oranje. “Are you going to open the door? Or do you want us to just take the ammo boxes back to the ship…?”
“This is all?” Counselor Van Der Beek asked, stunned.
“You’re looking at about half the remaining USMC, sir,” Faith said. “Colonel Hamilton is on his way up. I’ll let him handle the rest of the negotiations, if you don’t mind, sir. My men and I have some more zombie hunting to do….”
“Colonel, I understand your concerns,” Counselor Van Der Beek said. “And I fully support your mission. However, we are Dutch, Colonel. We trade. You could say it is in our blood.”
Colonel Hamilton forebore to comment on the fact that Counselor Van Der Beek was blacker than Sergeant Roosevelt. He had enough history to know that the Netherlands, like the United States, had always been a nation of immigrants.
“What are you looking for in terms of trade, Counselor?” Hamilton asked.
“The island is somewhat poor for farming, and the refugees you want to land are going to need to be fed,” Van Der Beek pointed out. “We would like a weight for weight measure of materials for oil products from the supply point. And before the point is accessed, we are going to need some boats. The storms destroyed all of ours.”
“We cleared your island and intend to put the supply point back into operation, Counselor,” Colonel Hamilton said. “Which will take some doing. Not to say that your points don’t have merit, but I’d have to put a value on those items as well. If we calculated the costs based upon pre-Plague numbers, we could more or less pump everything out of the oil point for the cost of that operation alone.”
“This is not pre-Plague,” Van Der Beek pointed out. “Do you know of another point with similar quantities of material?”
“Not available,” Hamilton admitted. “But that one wasn’t available until we cleared the island. Our current standard on salvage of ships is that survivors retain fifty percent of material onboard. That would seem to be equitable. U.S. military, in return for clearing the island and getting the oil point back in operation, retains fifty percent of the material at the oil point with the Dutch local government retaining the other fifty percent. When or if we burn through the first fifty percent, we’ll negotiate what we pay for additional material. Or you can finish clearing the island with your Marines and try to get the oil point back in operation yourself.”
“I’ll accept on the condition that you throw in thirty days’ supplies for the refugees.”
“I’ll see what I can do on that,” Hamilton said. “I’ll need to get it from Gitmo. We should have the materials available, but I’m not sure what Squadron’s needs are. I’ll also see what I can do on the boats. They’re scarce throughout this area due to the storms. But both points obviously have merit and I fully support them.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Colonel,” Counselor Van Der Beek said, smiling and standing up with his hand out. “We look forward to becoming the grand refuge of the Caribbean…”
“We can run the Eric Shivak down with a general load of supplies,” Steve said, frowning. “And we’ll see what we can figure out on boats. Last year’s storms must have been doozies; all the satellite images show pretty much nothing but wrecks from Puerto Rico down to the Windward Islands. Any luck with your primary mission?”
“No, sir,” Hamilton said. “Dry hole again. More medical texts but we’ve got about every standard and nonstandard text you could want at this point.”
“Finish clearance, then hold in place,” Steve said. “There’s another possibility in the wind I’m discussing with the Joint Chiefs. If the local authorities are comfortable with it, have your platoon engage in training local militia. Eventually other groups will start clearing and moving around and at a certain point we probably have to worry about raiding. So it’s for more than zombie clearance. I’m going to do some consulting to higher about what better potential targets are.”
“Roger, sir,” Hamilton said.
“What’s the status of our astronauts?” Steve asked.
“They’re all still with us, sir,” Hamilton said. “About to get their booster shots, which is the trickier injection but…still with us, sir. Lieutenant Lyons is chomping at the bit, I’ll tell you that.”
“I can imagine,” Steve said. “Clear the island, get started on the oil point, train the locals. And I’ll look at a new mission.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Mission,” Faith said, pointing to the sand table scale model of the island. “First Platoon, USMC, reinforced by Dutch Marine personnel, will perform night clearance of the island of Statia with purpose of reducing infected presence to the level of lightish green, sort of an aquamarine would be nice but we’ll settle for chartreuse…”
“Rigged up like this, the infected can’t get to you,” Sergeant Smith said, his voice muffled by the gas mask. “But we only use it at night on land. It’s hot as hell any time and fucking horrible in the daytime.”
The Dutch Marines had chosen to “augment” the U.S. Marines clearing the island by night. They had been detailed, one to each clearance team, to get some training on night clearance. Fortunately, they all spoke English.
Smitty thus had Sergeant Roosevelt, who seemed like a steady guy, and PFC Haroldson in the car, cruising down a darkened street called “Kapelweg” with the windows down and the tunes going full blast.
“So if we have to, we’ll go to scrum,” Smith continued. “That’s hand-to-hand. With this stuff they can bite all they want and they’re not getting anywhere. Target.” He was driving so he just lifted his M4 one-handed and fired three rounds into the infected stumbling out of the darkness. “Biggest concern is not getting stuck, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Sergeant Roosevelt said.
“Questions, comments, concerns?” Smitty asked as Haroldson called “Target” and took a shot out of the back.
“Not really,” Sergeant Roosevelt said, firing into the darkness at another infected. It dropped like a stone. “It is…odd. I was MARSOF, our version of your Recon Marines. The technique is to be as invisible as possible. This is…strange.”
“Tell me about it,” Smitty said as Haroldson took another shot. “I was a scout-sniper. Making noise is against my religion. But you want to draw them to you…”
“Missed that one, Sergeant,” Haroldson said. “Could you stop to wait for it to…Never mind. Damn Barbie guns…”
“One question,” Roosevelt said. “Is your lieutenant as young as she appears?”
“Younger,” Smitty said. “But let me tell you about Shewolf, brother…”
“Target, two thirty,” Sergeant Hoag said, tapping Condrey on the shoulder and pointing.
The road past the airport ran through a low cut that led to the oil point. Since firing up the oil point was, obviously, out of the question, Sergeant Hoag’s machine gun team had been augmented with two Dutch Marines for security and placed on the edge of one of the hills that made the cut. With three cars shining their lights onto the road, they were drawing a trickle of infected. Which Condrey was studiously mowing down.
“Target two thirty, aye,” Condrey said, targeting the infected.
“Fire.”
“Firing, aye.”
The latest infected tumbled to the ground, scythed by three 7.62x51 rounds. Hoag had carefully waited until it was clear of the road. There were a few bodies blocking it but just below them was a gravel pit with some front-end loaders. They’d be easy enough to clear come daylight.